


cold hearts brew colder songs

by soaringrachel



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Blood, Dark, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder, Other, Physical Abuse, Vampires, lack of consent/problematic consent, psychological abuse, the following tags are warnings not advertisements:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 11:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2107704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringrachel/pseuds/soaringrachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You killed me,” Brendon says next, and Dallon says, “You did come back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	cold hearts brew colder songs

**Author's Note:**

> a blanket warning: this is a dark fic; dallon is evil in it and he wins. warnings in total: emotional/psychological manipulation, physical and emotional abuse, murder, a fair amount of blood and violence, a kidnapping, and possible implications of underage sex (certainly of adults taking advantage of teenagers). a character is turned into a vampire without consent and the relationship that follows is one in which his ability to consent is debatable; i've tagged it for non-consensual sex despite no actual sex occurring. if you want more details on any of this feel free to ask.
> 
> this is not a remix of gamble (endquestionmark)'s vampire fic only in that they were written concurrently; essentially, we went to gospel tour, dallon licked his bass, we had a story idea, and when it came time to decide who would write it we each ended up doing it. we've termed it a mirror remix, it should totally catch on. they are essentially the same story, as written by two different people; as such, particulars differ, but there are a few notes struck in both.
> 
> title comes from panic's "let's kill tonight."

Dallon’s, like, a shit, but he’s a shit that looks like a sexy dead guy, so Brendon’s always sort of been chill with it.

The sexy thing is obvious, much discussed over many a late night phone call with Sarah, the screaming crowds proof enough it’s not just him. The dead guy thing is--okay, Brendon’s definitely not the only one to notice that either, especially with the way Dallon dresses, like he’s not sure what year it is (Brendon’s pretty sure he actually just doesn’t care what year it is, which is better).

So maybe Brendon teases him a little, about both things. Breathes “you fucking vampire” at him when Dallon is still awake at four in the morning (inconvenient, because Brendon had one of those Sarah calls planned). Makes eyes at him onstage and doesn’t, definitely doesn’t enjoy the way Dallon never makes eyes back (except that Brendon knows Dallon knows he’s flirting, and just chooses to take it instead of playing fair).

So maybe Brendon, when teasing leaves him with nothing but a cold tug in his stomach from the way Dallon watches him and doesn’t respond, maybe Brendon pushes. Maybe he waits for that moment when Dallon’s tongue flashes and grins wide, licks his own teeth. Maybe he snatches Dallon’s water bottle onstage, quietly teasing him that vampires don’t need water, feeling flushed and pleased when Dallon just takes Brendon’s own and drinks it all without a breath. Maybe he finds someone to fuck and then finds Dallon when his hair is still sweaty and his eyes still half-unfocused. (Sarah’s policy is that it’s fine as long as he tells her about it in detail. “In detail” tends to be arbitrary, and Brendon likes Sarah when she’s being arbitrary.) Maybe he imagines, late at night, that Dallon really doesn’t need to breathe, when he kisses, when he does other things, and maybe he tells Dallon in the morning that he dreamed of him at night. So he pushes; he’s Brendon fucking Urie and it’s practically his job.

So he pushes; so he pushes a little too hard. So sometimes, when he looks at Dallon, he thinks he might actually see more teeth than he should be seeing--he wonders how Dallon does that. Sometimes when he tells Dallon he’s dreamed about him Dallon says, “and I dreamed about you,” and somehow Brendon’s scared instead of flattered. Sometimes when Brendon teases Dallon pushes back hard; when he tells the waitress “steak, bloody” for Dallon at a restaurant, Dallon glares at him until he eats it himself, juice dripping onto his shirt while Dallon eats Brendon’s burger and fries without even smiling about it. Brendon’s used to feeling dizzy and pleased when someone puts him in his place, it’s a good part of why he gets out of it in the first place, but that time he feels like a scolded dog as much as a spoiled cat.

 

Dallon’s had Brendon’s number since--well, he realizes, laughing a little, since before he met him. If there was ever a man chomping at the bit for eternal life. “You remind me of me when I was your age,” Dallon says, completely straight-faced, but Brendon’s smile in response is suggestive enough Dallon actually wonders if he gets it.

It wouldn’t, Dallon reflects that night, be the first time he’s been found out. He’s never been especially conscientious about covering it up, just relied on the fact that most people just don’t expect their neighbor to be anything but human. As long as he keeps the blood on the down-low and breathes in conversation, he’s usually fine, but people do figure it out. He doesn’t think Brendon has yet, but boy’s pretty smart for a pretty face; he thinks he can get it eventually.

Dallon drops little hints, lets Brendon catch him up later than he should be, goes a few days without eating just to make him wonder. He’s going to turn Brendon, he knows already--because of that pretty face, because he’s never done it and he’s curious, because the boy clearly wants it even if he doesn’t know what he wants--but he doesn’t think he should come right out with it. Better to let Brendon catch on on his own. Dallon’s confident he’ll know when he’s ready, and if he’s wrong, Dallon honestly doesn’t care much.

Touring is a good lifestyle for anyone like him. Like him in the vampire sense--he spots them in road crews at festivals, in the ensembles of Broadway casts, driving buses for basketball teams--but also like him in personality. He likes finding a new place, falling in love with it, and leaving it behind, would like it even if it weren’t convenient. But it is convenient, because being on tour makes it so easy to find a pretty girl and drink until she’s faint, shocky enough she won’t remember the encounter, anonymous enough it won’t matter if she does. They don’t have to be pretty, or girls, but the former is preferable for obvious reasons and the latter is just easier, given he usually starts with a seduction.

He only needs to do it about once a week, but he goes out in Boston even though it’s only been three days. Tonight Brendon looked at him onstage and mouthed “fucking vampire” when Dallon bared his teeth at the crowd--no fangs, of course, but it got Brendon excited anyway, and that’s got Dallon excited. Brendon knows, Brendon wants it, and it’ll be time to change him soon, and just the thought of it brings up his bloodlust. Dallon’s been able to control himself for centuries but the feeling is still there, and he wonders if it’d be worth the risk to kill tonight.

He doesn’t, though, because he knows it’ll make it all the better when he leans in after a show in two weeks and bites, hard, on Brendon’s neck. Brendon makes a startled, happy noise at first, and then he screams, loud, and Dallon realizes--he didn’t know after all, maybe wouldn’t even have wanted it if he had.

Well, Dallon thinks, and sucks harder.

 

Brendon teases harder than ever in DC, throws his head back and shows his neck at least once in each of the first six songs. He’s taking the joke too far but he can’t stop, because he knows it has to crash sometime and until then he’s going to make the most of it. Dallon doesn’t respond, which if anything makes Brendon push harder, wanting a reaction. The crowd is into it, though; it’s a good night, an electric night, and by the end of it he’s forgotten the vampire joke for the night, forgotten messing with Dallon altogether, onto other things, other ways of making everyone’s eyes fix on him.

So he’s surprised when Dallon shoves him into a dressing room the second they get offstage. Dallon doesn’t speak, just leans in hard and mean, and so he’s surprised, and then he’s pleased, because, ooh, fuck, Dallon is biting him, and then he’s terrified, and in pain, and very confused, because fuck, Dallon is biting him.

Brendon is, okay, he’s the lead singer of Panic! at the Disco, “what does being murdered feel like” is something he’s had to clear from his google history more than once. It hurts, is the answer. It hurts like fuck. Also, it feels kind of good, though that might just be him, and not like, a general murder thing. He thought he’d be able to feel the blood rushing out of his neck, but actually he can’t really feel anything--his body doesn’t feel like his anymore, like he’s floating, the way it gets during some of the very best shows, or particularly good sex. Except those are good feelings and this? This is not a good feeling. This is worse than a broken arm, worse than a splash of hot oil, worse than any of the kinkier things he and Sarah have tried.

He can feel the blackout at the edge of his brain, sneaking up on him, and he wants it, leans into it, but Dallon slaps him when his eyes close and he doesn’t really feel it, not over the pain, but his eyes shock open anyway.

“Not yet,” Dallon says, pulling away and then he bites into his own wrist and raises it to Brendon’s mouth.

Brendon jerks his head away--a bad move, actually, because blood spurts out of his neck, how is he still awake, what the fuck--because no. No, he is not going to drink Dallon’s blood, no--and Dallon makes an impatient noise and shoves his wrist in, and after the first taste. Well. After the first taste, yes, Brendon is going to drink Dallon’s blood, greedy and slurping like a kid with a snowcone, like water after dancing.

“You can black out now,” Dallon says after a while, and if Brendon were conscious to think about it, maybe he’d be scared by how quickly he does.

 

Miscalculation aside, Dallon’s planned well; he and Brendon have two days off, leave to get themselves to the next town, and a rented car parked behind the venue. Dallon waits until no one’s going to see them, then tosses Brendon in the backseat--seatbelts not a major concern for rock stars or the living dead--and starts driving.

After twenty minutes he has to pull over, strip Brendon’s t-shirt, and gag him with it. He can’t drive with the kid screaming in his sleep like that.

Other than that, though, he doesn’t stop much. He picks a long, winding route to the next gig that’ll keep them in the car until they have a show to play; Dallon likes driving, and he doesn’t get to do it enough. It’s meditative, sort of; Dallon doesn’t get bored the way humans do, he’s too old for that, time moves too quickly. So after thirty hours of empty highway and Brendon’s muffled shouts of pain, he’s still enjoying it. Brendon half-wakes up every few hours, but he passes back out again very quickly; Dallon has only the faintest memories of his own change, but he knows it was excruciating. He wouldn’t mind Brendon’s company, but there’s going to be plenty of time for that. All the time in the world.

On the second night he gets a phone call. He’s gotten a couple texts, but he’s ignoring them; this one, though, he checks the caller ID and laughs a little, answers the phone.

“Sarah!”

“Dallon,” she says, a little worried, “Brendon was supposed to call last night and he didn’t--I know you’re off, but have you heard from him?”

The wording’s so perfect it makes him laugh again. “Yeah,” he tells Sarah, who he likes, “I had to gag him, sorry.”

Sarah laughs--like he said, he likes her--and he goes on, “I just couldn’t focus with him screaming like that.”

Sarah stops laughing.

“What the fuck, Dallon,” she says, flatly, because Dallon didn’t even put a hint of a joke into his voice.

Dallon smiles. “Turned your boy into a vampire,” he says, “hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh my God,” Sarah says, and then, “Shit, is that gonna like--”

“Relax,” Dallon says, “it’s not gonna burn my ears or anything.”

“It makes sense,” Sarah says, tone wondering--smarter than her boy, then, which isn’t surprising. “Way too much sense, you’ve got that whole sexy dead guy thing going on--”

“Hmm,” Dallon says, and files that away.

“So? What, it hurts? Like Twilight?”

“It hurts,” Dallon says. “You’ve read Twilight?”

“Everyone’s read Twilight.”

“I haven’t,” Dallon says. “So you don’t mind, then?”

“Depends,” Sarah says, “You gonna change me, too?”

And that’s an interesting proposition.

 

Brendon’s aware of being in a car, being in pain, Dallon’s presence. When he comes to himself, though, he doesn’t have any of the usual tools to tell how long it’s been--he’s not hungry or thirsty, still in burning pain so soreness doesn’t help. It’s nighttime, but for all he knows it’s been a week, or it’s the same night, though he thinks he remembers seeing sun.

“It’s Tuesday,” Dallon says, “and no I can’t read minds, and you’ve got a show in two hours.”

Brendon retches, which is what it takes for him to realize he’s gagged, T-shirt stuffed in his mouth in a way that surely shouldn’t let him breathe. He pulls at it; there’s a knot, and he hurts too much to focus on it.

“I’ll take it off,” Dallon says. “Don’t scream.”

So he takes it off, and Brendon doesn’t scream.

“You should eat,” Dallon says, when Brendon has struggled to sit up, shirtless. His pants are too tight and they hurt like hell--everything hurts like hell--and he thinks about taking them off but Dallon is right there and Brendon does have some dignity.

“What the hell,” he says, or tries to say, but that hurts too, like knives in his throat, and oh God he has to sing in two hours.

“You should eat,” Dallon says again. “Me, if you’re not up to getting out of the car.”

Brendon blinks and Dallon laughs, drily.

“Which you obviously aren’t,” he says, and tilts his neck back a bit and--

Brendon’s there almost before he decides to move, teeth shifting, hooking into Dallon’s skin and biting down, hard, harder than he does with Sarah or anyone else before, hard enough to break the skin and start blood flowing into his mouth, sweet like Mexican Coke, and at last he thinks, oh, I’m a vampire.

He does feel better when Dallon pushes him away, telling him he’s had enough. Still in pain, but it’s the kind of pain that’s electric and sparking, not good exactly but not bad in the same way an injury’s bad, and he can think through it, and there’s a shot of harder pain when he speaks but it’s just an electric shot to the throat, a bite of the tongue, not the horrible dull throb of before.

“Fuck,” is the first thing he says, because it feels good to say it, and then “were you always--”

“Since I was twenty-five,” Dallon says. “Which was a very long time ago.”

“You killed me,” he says next, and Dallon says, “You did come back.”

Brendon stares at him, which makes his eyes hurt.

“But yeah,” Dallon says, shrugging a bit, “I killed you. Happy?”

“Happy,” Brendon says, and he means to question, not confirm, but Dallon smiles.

 

Dallon’s kind to him, that first night. Well, kind is relative; Brendon does the show, sings through the pain, and Dallon finds them a fan to share later, makes sure no one sees her go backstage with the band. It’s not really safe, feeding like that, but Brendon’s clearly not up for going out. So Dallon brings him dinner, which is kind. Less kind is stroking his hair after they’ve eaten, watching Brendon lean into it and then flinch, hard, every time Dallon’s fingers brush his scalp. He laughs at that, low and a little mean, and Brendon bites at his hand. Without thinking Dallon draws back and hits him, not hard, just enough to show he means it, and goes back to stroking; Brendon doesn’t bite him again.

Dallon knows, of course, that there’s a certain power involved in creating a new vampire. He knew a woman in the seventies who used to say “you break it, you buy it,” broad and insinuating; she had a number of fresh-made around her all the time. Whoever made Dallon, however, left him; decided he didn’t want some kid crazy with bloodlust around, Dallon supposes. Fair enough. In any case, he’s never experienced it firsthand, but he knows about it, the need to obey, to respect. You can resist it, the woman had confided in him, but you have to really want to. Dallon knows Brendon; he doubts he’ll really want to. So there’s that.

Brendon’s really doing admirably. He spends as much time in as little clothing as he can, because it scrapes his skin like sandpaper, Dallon imagines. He latches onto Dallon like a barnacle, but that’s not so unusual; nobody thinks anything of it. He sings, even though Dallon knows it must hurt like hell--he actually wonders for a bit how he’s coping with that, but then he realizes Brendon’s obviously hard in his tight pants onstage, and. That’s how he’s dealing with it. Dallon should’ve realized.

So, the third night, when Brendon moves to strip his shirt off, get some relief at least from one source of pain, Dallon decides not to be kind.

“Keep your clothes on, bro,” he says into the mic, mugging a little for the crowd. The crowd screams, laughs--they think it’s a joke, but he raises his eyebrows at Brendon so he’ll know it isn’t. Brendon swallows, winces--that hurts too, Dallon supposes--and leaves his shirt on.

By the end of the show he’s screaming as much as singing. “Nice,” Dallon says as they walk offstage, and as Brendon gets the shirt off at last he goes bright red with borrowed blood.

 

For the first week, Brendon’s world narrows to Dallon and himself. Dallon with his smug suggestions that are really commands, and himself in horrible pain, and the crowds of course, always the crowds. But at the end of a week he finds himself awake at dawn, and it almost doesn’t hurt, and he thinks of Sarah.

He almost calls her right then, but as he reaches for his phone there’s a wave of emotion, something he doesn’t recognize. Like nausea, and hunger, and a little like being turned on--he can’t put a name to it because he can’t think through it, and then he licks his lips and he realizes. Vampire. Right.

He finds Dallon in the back lounge of the bus, through the haze of sickness-emptiness-arousal, sinks his teeth into his neck before he says hello even though he knows it’s a mistake. Sure enough, Dallon yanks him off, slaps him hard and lets him fall to the floor.

“I needed--” Brendon says, but Dallon cuts him off.

“I know what you think you needed,” he says, lip curled a little. “You ate two nights ago. Don’t get greedy, Brendon.”  
He feels shamed, at that, almost crushed; Dallon’s not even disappointed, just disapproving, and Brendon stays sitting on the floor of the bus at Dallon’s feet, bites his lip.

“Bloodlust,” Dallon says. “It doesn’t mean you need to feed, just that you want to. Some of us can control it,” he adds, and the way he says it implies that Brendon isn’t some of us.

Brendon does try, though, and it subsides a little, after a while, and when he thinks he can speak again without jumping for Dallon’s jugular, he asks about Sarah.

Dallon laughs. “You want to know if you should tell her,” he says.

Brendon nods.

Dallon nods. “You could keep it a secret, of course. You could tell her, let her know you’re going to outlive her, but not until she ages past you, that unless you get your bloodlust under control it’ll never really be safe to be around you.”

Brendon waits, because he knows Dallon will tell him what to do if he waits.

“Or,” Dallon says, “you could take a third option,” and there’s a horrible, secretive smile on his face, and Brendon has never wanted to hear anything less or more than what he’s about to say.

“You could see if she’ll let you turn her.”

Brendon blinks, because he honestly hadn’t thought of that.

“She might let you,” Dallon says. “There are reasons to, even if you don’t seem to be taking much advantage.”

Brendon nods, listens.

“Eternal life, eternal youth--she’s a smart girl, Sarah. She might say yes.”

He’s going to do what Dallon says, Brendon knows. Knew before he asked for advice. This time it sounds right, like it makes sense but--Brendon’s been fuzzy, but he’s not stupid.

“Will she--” he starts, and then stops and starts again. “Will it be like me and you,” he manages.

Dallon smiles at that again. “Be specific,” he says. It’s mean, and Brendon doesn’t speak.

“Be specific,” Dallon says again, and this time Brendon can’t help it; he wants to do what Dallon asks, and that’s the problem.

“You know,” he says quietly, “you know I’ve been . . .”

“Obedient?” Dallon says. “Not new, bro.”

Brendon’s got enough blood to flush.

“It’s a function of creation,” Dallon says, and smiles slightly. “You break it, you buy it.”  
“So Sarah--”

“You’re a nice kid,” Dallon says to Brendon. “You’d take good care of her.”

Which doesn’t make sense, until Brendon remembers the sting of Dallon’s fingers on his cheek, and realizes Dallon’s standard for nice.

 

Brendon’s--well, Dallon knows it’s unfair, but Brendon’s control is embarrassingly bad. Dallon pulls him offstage at least once a show, slaps him open-handed, hisses “You’re drooling out there,” and knows Brendon hears it “stop embarrassing me,” and doesn’t really mind. It doesn’t make Brendon any better; he can’t go out and eat or he’d go wild with bloodlust so Dallon brings him back snacks and watches him drink from them. Teenagers, usually, practically children, the type of fans who are scared of Brendon even before he brings out the fangs. Dallon doesn’t think Brendon likes how young they are, which is perhaps why he does it. He can’t refuse, not with his fangs slipping out the moment there’s warm blood in the room, not to mention Dallon telling him to shut up and eat like it’s a pizza in front of him with the wrong toppings.

Sometimes Dallon finishes them off when Brendon’s done with them, leaves the bodies for the cops to find and bury and the newspapers to excoriate the parents for letting their children go out alone. He knows the difference between lust and bloodlust, and he knows what this is, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy the kill.

He never lets Brendon kill.

They go on all right like that for a while, and then in Phoenix, Arizona, Brendon gets excited. Dallon can see it, feel it even, by the time he starts “Miss Jackson,” the way Brendon is looking at the pit, like he wants to be swallowed by it. He thinks it’ll be okay, and then, by the end of the song, he doesn’t.

“Don’t eat anybody,” he says, into the mic even, and Brendon hasn’t eaten in a few days, so he doesn’t quite turn red, but he looks abashed. Dallon laughs, a little bit for the crowd, a little bit for Brendon, and they go on with the show, and Brendon doesn’t eat anybody.

“Don’t get that close again,” Dallon says, after the show, “are you stupid,” and gives Brendon another of those open-handed slaps. He knows they’re maddening for Brendon; there’s nothing passionate about the way Dallon hits him, and that must drive him out of his mind.

But Brendon goes glazed-eyed and wild the next night, too, and the next. Dallon doesn’t use the mic--once he can play off as a joke, but now instead he just quirks his lips so Brendon knows to meet him offstage for a minute, tells him no. Hits him, but not until after the show, lets Brendon hope it’ll be different. It isn’t, of course.

The third night, Dallon says “fucking stop, Brendon,” because he’s tired of this game, and Brendon says “fucking hit me then,” and that. Well, Dallon figured Brendon was pushing on purpose but he didn’t expect him to admit it so soon.

Dallon does hit him, flat-handed and only enough to sting, not burn, and then he holds up his hand. “Brendon,” he says, “this isn’t a treat.”

Brendon is practically pouting, like a child, and Dallon smiles at him, curls his hand into a fist.

“Maybe if you behave,” he says, “you can have a treat,” and he leaves Brendon there to work it out.

 

Brendon doesn’t call Sarah for a week after he talks to Dallon about it, because how do you have that conversation. In the end he doesn’t call her at all, because she shows up, doesn’t even tell him she’s going to, just appears sidestage at their Seattle show midway through “Mona Lisa” and sends a shock through Brendon that must show, because  everyone but Dallon gives him a wide berth for the rest of the night.

Everyone but Dallon, and Sarah. Who comes over and hugs him hard after the show, and Brendon’s not in constant pain anymore, but a touch like that can still--well, he’s not expecting it, and he yelps a little, and he hears Dallon laugh behind him.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says to Sarah, meaning somewhere alone, and he holds his breath in case Dallon tells him not to, but he lets them go. They have a hotel, thank God, and Brendon takes Sarah up to his room, sits down with her on the edge of the bed, and.

She yells at him.

“Two weeks, Brendon,” she says, angry, and God, it’s only been two weeks. She’s going on, something about how he didn’t call, how he could’ve died (he smiles a little at that one).

“It’s gonna take a lot to make this up to me,” she says, fiery-angry, and so he just blurts it out.

“How about living forever?” he says.

Sarah does not react how he expected--which is to laugh, or scream, or keep scolding. Sarah leans back on her hands and says, “Maybe. Tell me more.”

Brendon looks at her and lets his fangs slip out. He fed last night, nearly killed a teenage boy before Dallon yanked him away. It left him with a swirling stomach but full veins; he’s not going to lunge at Sarah.

“What is this, Brendon,” Sarah is saying, and Brendon tells her what it is.

And at the end of it, Sarah pulls him down onto the bed, kisses him hard enough his lips buzz with pain. He thinks that means yes, it must mean yes, and he reaches out to take her hands, hold them, leans in again.

Sarah pulls away.

“Maybe,” she says again.

 

Dallon has lived a very, very long time, and while turning Brendon was certainly one of the better decisions he’s made in that time, inviting Sarah to join them in Seattle was one of the best. Brendon can’t look tired the way humans can but Dallon knows what to look for, and the morning after Sarah shows up Brendon is beautifully exhausted.

“She won’t say yes,” Brendon says to Dallon, when Sarah is getting settled in his bunk. “She won’t say no but she won’t say yes, God, Dallon.”

“I don’t care,” Dallon says, which isn’t strictly true, but is worth it for the look on Brendon’s face.

She touches him all the time, and at first Dallon thinks it’s just sweet; she always has, after all. But then he catches Brendon wincing, still sore and sensitive from the change, and Sarah gives him a little nod. Dallon can’t help himself, he laughs out loud.

That night they happen to be alone, the three of them, while the openers play, and Brendon opens his mouth the second he realizes, and starts--begging, Dallon realizes, and realizes too that he’s picking up where he left off.

“Sarah, please,” Brendon says, simple and stripped bare, “please let me, you’re my wife, you can be, it can be forever.”  
Sarah says nothing.

“You’d be so beautiful,” Brendon goes on, voice breaking, “so beautiful, forever, you’d be,”

Sarah still isn’t saying anything, which is impressive, amazing, because Dallon knows how much she wants this, how hard it must be not to just offer up her neck to him.

“God, Sarah,” Brendon is saying, and he sounds embarrassed to say it, “you’d be beautiful bloody, you’d, you could kill, you could--”

“She could,” Dallon says, a reminder that Brendon can’t, “she’d look lovely killing,” and Brendon closes his eyes, breathes yes, and then there’s a knock on the door, and they’ve got to go.

“Tomorrow,” Dallon whispers to Sarah, feather-soft, as he brushes past her, and she nods. Tomorrow.

 

They get to the next venue hours early. It’s Brendon’s least favorite part of touring, the travel over but the performing not started yet; he’s antsy, sprints around the parking lot while everyone else starts setting up to burn off some of the energy. He wishes it felt good to be away from Sarah and Dallon, from wearing his voice out asking her, begging her, but Sarah’s his wife and Dallon his vampire mentor or whatever Dallon is, and it doesn’t really feel good. So he goes to find them.

He stops a tech, one they picked up after he changed, so he doesn’t know his name. The tech points him to a dressing room, and Brendon wipes his hands on his pants, grabs the doorknob, prepares to try again, get Sarah to agree if he can just say the right words--

Dallon’s teeth are buried in Sarah’s throat.

He makes a noise, a low grunt, a punch in the stomach, and Sarah looks up. She moans when she sees him, high and thready and beautiful, and then she reaches up and snags Dallon’s ear with her teeth and he laughs but doesn’t swat her away.

For a moment all Brendon thinks about is how beautiful it is, in an arousing way but also just in an aesthetic way, red blood and pale skin and flashing teeth and nails. But then he remembers you’d take good care of her and he thinks about how Dallon takes care of him, and he’s spitting angry, on Dallon in a flash, trying to pull him off.

But Dallon, though he doesn’t look it, is stronger, and he has Brendon pinned in seconds.

“I know I said,” he tells Brendon, and his eyes are flashing with bloodlust, and the stolen in blood in Brendon’s veins runs cold and hot at once, “that this would be a treat. But I want to make it clear, you are not being rewarded.”

And then there’s a fist, flying into Brendon. His side, his stomach, his face, snapping it to the side--this isn’t being hit, Brendon thinks, eyes unfocused, this is being beaten, and Sarah, below them, is bleeding out and breathing sharp and staccato and joyful. Dallon lets him drop to the floor before she loses consciousness, lets her lap the blood from his wrist until she collapses, beginning to change.

Brendon starts to go to her, but Dallon stops him.

“Soundcheck,” he says, and Brendon raises a hand to his throat.

 

Sarah wakes up and everything hurts, but she sees Brendon at her side, carefully not touching her, Dallon standing behind him, watching them carefully, afraid for the first time in all this to just take what he wants, respecting Sarah’s claim to her husband, she thinks. It’s how Dallon thinks, and Sarah supposes when she’s as old as Dallon she’ll think the same way. She wonders what Dallon will be like then.

Brendon’s bare-chested, and it gives her an idea.

“He’s been good, after all,” she says to Dallon.

Dallon nods. “He has.”

Brendon looks up at her, eyes bright with wonder and hope, and she smiles at him, loving him in a new way in her new body.

“Do you want your reward now?” she asks. “From us both?”

Brendon breathes in, a sharp yes, and Sarah smiles again.

She raises her hands and draws her nails down his arm, sharp and bright and red, and Brendon bites his lip hard enough a drop of blood squeezes out, and Sarah licks it up, sweet and strong, while Dallon takes his turn.


End file.
